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The annual Perseid Meteor Shower is already underway. This year twice the usual number of meteors is expected due to the position of Jupiter. The Perseids are debris from the periodic comet 109P Swift-Tuttle.

The shower is expected to peak during the night of 2016 AUG 11-12. Its radiant is in the constellation Perseus. That is the direction toward which the meteor tails point, but the meteors are equally likely to appear anywhere along your horizon. The region near your zenith will likely present the fewest but brightest meteors.

The Perseids are usually the finest shower of the year. Normally at the peak up to sixty meteors per hour may be seen by some sharp eyed folks, but that could double this year. For observers north of the tropics, the meteors appear virtually all night, although most prolifically during the hours before dawn. The waxing gibbous Moon near the shower peak may present somewhat of a disturbance during the evening, but it will set during the middle of the night.

Descriptions of the shower or perhaps even lucky photos would be welcome additions to this thread. My calendar for the major meteor showers including Moon illumination data can be found at www.CurtRenz.com/asteroids.html

Was checking camera settings and practicing last night. I saw one beautiful, long duration meteor about 10:00 CDT started at about 20 degrees East, about 80 degrees up from North. Went ESE to about 60 degrees above the eastern horizon.
May have captured a couple on the camera. Will know when I download them to the computer this evening.

__________________"Political correctness is a doctrine,...,which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end."
"I pointed out that his argument was wrong in every particular, but he rightfully took me to task for attacking only the weak points." Myriadhttp://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=6853275#post6853275

As it has done for several years now, the weather refused to cooperate for me. In fact, I was woken, sometime in the early morning hours, by particularly loud thunder; yes, we have no Perseids for you to see this year, Jean Tate!

Which is a real pity, because apparently last night's show was the best, for the Perseids, for a decade or so.

There is, however, a consolation prize: Radio Meteor Zoo is a just launched citizen science project, of the crowd sourcing kind (link).

From the blurb I just got in my email:

Quote:

BRAMS (Belgian RAdio Meteor Stations) is a network of radio receiving stations using reflection of radio waves on meteor trails to detect and characterize meteoroids falling into the Earths atmosphere.

Every day a huge amount of data is produced by the BRAMS network with thousands of meteor echoes registered. The data are presented as images (called spectrograms) and automatic detection algorithms try to detect specific shapes associated with meteor echoes. However, none of them can perfectly mimic the human eye which stays the best detector. The problem is particularly striking during meteor showers, occurring when the Earth is passing through a cloud of dust particles left behind by a comet when it approaches the Sun. Many meteor echoes with complex shapes are then observed in the spectrograms. The Radio Meteor Zoo project starts with data from the Perseids 2016 (peaking around August 11-12) with dust particles belonging to comet Swift-Tuttle. We request the help of many eyes from citizen scientists around the world. Your help is invaluable!

Your meteor detections will be used to determine how many particles enter the Earths atmosphere per hour, to determine the peak time of meteor activity, to estimate the size distribution of the particles, and to compute trajectories of particles using data from multiple BRAMS receiving stations.
People from all over the world and of all ages are welcome to participate. Whether you love meteors, astronomy, or just helping out, come join the Radio Meteor Zoo today and discover the fascinating world of dust from space.

I'm in town, and have a street light in the alley right behind my yard so I have terrible sky. But that didn't stop me from hanging out an old chair and looking at the sky for a while. Saw a couple of tiny, not very bright, meteor streaks but nothing very big before I fell asleep listening to the crickets. Very pleasant evening.

I laid out in my front yard for 30 minutes (that's all I could take) at 1:30AM and I saw stars, but no shooting stars.

I saw one little flash.

Isn't it the same every year? They announce its going the be the most spectacular show in years. It's like Mars is going to be as big as the Moon. You hear this meteor shower hype every year.

__________________"At the Supreme Court level where we work, 90 percent of any decision is emotional. The rational part of us supplies the reasons for supporting our predilections."
Justice William O. Douglas

I had a 24mm lens on a Canon 6d pointed straight up from 11 PM until 6 AM, taking a 10 second shot every 20 seconds.
I did get several small meteors, a bunch of aircraft, and some satellites.
Nothing like 60 per hour, much less 120 to 150...

__________________"Political correctness is a doctrine,...,which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end."
"I pointed out that his argument was wrong in every particular, but he rightfully took me to task for attacking only the weak points." Myriadhttp://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=6853275#post6853275

Until 2001 we watched the Perseids from deep in the Everglades. Since moving to cloudy Washington state it's been hit or miss every year, mainly miss.

This year though was amazing! We set the alarm for 1 am and hoped for the best. The sky was clear when we got up and because we live in a small town the view from our back deck was actually pretty good.

Within 5 minutes of snuggling down in our chairs we saw a couple of dim zippers and one fairly bright Perseid. About every third or fourth meteor was bright enough to leave a trail although we didn't see any fireballs. I didn't think to keep a count but I'd say by the time we went in around 3 am we'd seen close to... well, a whole lot of meteors, including two randoms.

All in all for us this was a great year for Perseids. My husband said this might have been better than all the years in the Everglades too and he may be right. Oh, and we saw (briefly) a satellite traveling north to south too - at 1 am!

Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, about an hour between 2 & 3 am 12 Aug, clear overhead, some haze around the horizon, saw about 50, most were small and dim, but there were a half dozen or pretty good ones.

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__________________"Political correctness is a doctrine,...,which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end."
"I pointed out that his argument was wrong in every particular, but he rightfully took me to task for attacking only the weak points." Myriadhttp://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=6853275#post6853275

YouTube Video This video is not hosted by the ISF. The ISF can not be held responsible for the suitability or legality of this material. By clicking the link below you agree to view content from an external website.

__________________"Political correctness is a doctrine,...,which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end."
"I pointed out that his argument was wrong in every particular, but he rightfully took me to task for attacking only the weak points." Myriadhttp://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=6853275#post6853275

Ended up having an impromptu star party in my apartment parking lot after one of the residents knocked on my door, scared half to death, wanting a to use my camera to document "things happening to the sky and the moon... no one will believe without camera". (It's mostly low-income, no-education immigrant families around this neighborhood) Some of the adults were incredulous of my explanations, but the kids all thought it was supercool.

__________________Knowing that we do not know, it does not necessarily follow that we can not know.

Was camping up north, hoping for clear skies. Clouded over right around 10 pm. However, I did get to see an air flotilla of chinese balloon lanterns which was pretty cool.

The kids got their apps out and enjoyed finding the planets (Mars, Jupiter, Saturn). I woke up at 3am and stayed out for about an hour, saw maybe 6 dim ones, as seems to occur every time I do get to see any.

Isn't it the same every year? They announce its going the be the most spectacular show in years. It's like Mars is going to be as big as the Moon. You hear this meteor shower hype every year.

It's not in the least hype..I've seen 60 plus ( a lot plus ) per hour and if I wasn't down under where the Perseids are not as visible would have expected more than that this year.

Many watchers do not set up properly in a dark area, let their eyes adjust and actually stick around.

The one high volume shower I saw 5 fireballs just on the way to the watch area at a sailplane field.
I've seen a dozen in an hour just sitting in my hot tub. - narrow FOV and the loom from Toronto.

You do have to do some work to get the best times for your specific area and also a bit of luck with moon-rise etc. If you can see the Milky Way easily then you have clear enough skies for a good meteor show.
The earth is barrelling through a comet debris field so density changes every second.

If you cannot see the Milky Way ...you likely miss a majority of the meteors with only the fireballs easily visible.

I thought it was a dud. I saw one meteor on the 11th and six on the 12th after sitting outside for 4 hours from midnight to 4:30. The weather was great here in SC on the 12th, no humidity, no cloud cover with a nice cool breeze. I fell asleep on the back porch so might have missed some, I'm not sure when I drifted off.

__________________"When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look but it was gone, I cannot put my finger on it now. The child is grown, the dream is gone. I have become comfortably numb. " Pink Floyd

I dunno; I think it might be interesting to have a total eclipse and a meteor shower at the same time. Would it get dark enough to see the meteors? That would make for some awesome viewing (and photo ops).

Isn't it the same every year? They announce its going the be the most spectacular show in years. It's like Mars is going to be as big as the Moon. You hear this meteor shower hype every year.

Yeah, I've heard the Perseids overhyped several years ago, only to drive to the mountains and experience a normal night worth of meteors under excellent viewing conditions.

On the other hand, the Geminids in December have been GREAT in recent years! Sometimes 2-5 in series within 10 seconds along the same general trajectory; sometimes more than one at the same time in different areas of the sky. Heck I was even seeing them while STILL DRIVING to the campsite, they were so intense that year!

While a meteorite might be warm or even too hot to touch, it seems very unlikely that one would still be super hot so as to start a fire.

Quote:

The American Meteor Society set the record straight, telling GrindTV in an email that the video is "Totally 100 percent fake. Meteorites are NOT hot when they hit the ground contrary to popular belief, which is based mostly on Hollywood movies. Meteorites are cold when they hit the ground and do not burn, cause fires and are not hot to the touch. A meteorite that size would also not leave an impact crater."

__________________What a fool believes, no wise man has the power to reason away. What seems to be, is always better than nothing.

So, in summary, we don't really know what temperature meteorites are when they fall. The problem is that there really isn't much quantitative data to base an answer on! However, many astronomers believe that small meteorites should be barely warm, or even cool when they hit the ground. The temperature probably varies depending on the size and composition of the original rock. For example, some materials might ablate more efficiently than others, or conduct the heat better. It's an interesting question, though, and one I wish we had a better answer to!

Meteorites are warm to the touch when they hit the ground. Not counting air bursts and meteorites that are very large with impacts that can result in molten rocks where they strike, no known small meteorite has sparked a fire, and yes, we do have enough examples of fresh falls to know that.

The fusion crust of a meteorite is a fraction of a millimeter thick. We have many many examples of these. As such they don't remain molten especially during terminal velocity fall which happens frequently after the meteor shatters above the ground. Again, we have many many examples.

But do keep up the "absolute" statements in a skeptics forum....makes for amusement if nothing else.

When the producer of the video steps and admits the ruse or the rock is examined by a specialist in meteorites then you can engrave the tablets.

Sorry, your examples are bull ****.

Take this nonsense:

Quote:

this FAQ lists reports of meteorites (compiled by Don Blakeslee of Wichita State University) that have been touched soon after they fell, and some people reported that the rock was hot, some that it was warm, and some that there was frost on the outside! These reports are all of a qualitative nature, usually based on the testimony of a small number of people.

Warm to the touch, yes, fairly well documented. But frost? Oh puhleese, that is so blatantly physically impossible as to provide proof the list is nothing more than unreliable anecdotes.

This does not support the fake video:

Quote:

so although they may singe grass or burn someone, they definitly don't hit the ground as a flaming fireball, the way you sometimes see it depicted in movies.

This supports what I posted:

Quote:

During the final free-fall portion of their flight, meteorites undergo very little frictional heating, and probably reach the ground at only slightly above ambient temperature." However, they point out that there really aren't many reports, and those we have are often "prone to hearsay".

You seem to be interpreting "we don't know" with an absurdly wide range of possibilities when the article actually refers to "we don't know" within a small range of warm to slightly hot.